Wealth consists of things like cured diseases, tasty and nourishing meals, being dry when it rains, and seeing the people you love as often as you want; and the resources and skills we use to create those other kinds of wealth, such as antibiotics, bread mold, spices, beans, houses, corrugated steel, iron ore, blast furnaces, airplanes, kerosene, and CAD software.
Gesell's scheme does not destroy any of those things; it only destroys money. Money is not wealth. Money is just a way to facilitate cooperative ventures with people we don't know and trust. With money, I can cooperate with 200 other people to pay for an intercontinental flight, and with the hundreds of thousands of other people who drilled and refined the kerosene, aluminum, and other resources needed to keep us in the air.
But the money game has a lot of drawbacks. So it's sensible to experiment with it and see how we can improve it. Gesell's scheme was one such experiment. It was reported to be very effective at creating wealth by its proponents when it was tried.
I don't understand the rationale for penalizing saving. The car I couldn't afford on this month's paychecks alone is wealth. Food and shelter after I'm too old to work will be wealth.
You can hardly expect anyone but a proponent to advocate for an idea...
Also, asking for a control group in an artsy fartsy field like economics is too much. Where is the control group that guides the decisions of the central banks? There is none! OMG GREAT DEPRESSION!
